Leaf
by Elessar King
Summary: Three weeks before the end of the school year, he stepped forward and presented his masterpiece.' nonslash, oneshot.


There's not much to say about this ficlet I guess. Just something that I kind of thought about driving back from class today. Thepoem was written by me, except for the first two lines, which are from Live For Today by 3 Doors Down. It's really not the best...poetry isn't normally my thing. In fact the whole thing is probably pretty sucky but..what else is new...

Leaf

"I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I sore." – Wash (Serenity)

Everybody knew who he was. The smart kid, the one who had skipped a couple of grades. He was quiet – sat in the back and scribbled in a worn notebook in every class while the teacher spoke. Whether he was taking notes in the form of every word the teacher said, or he already knew the subject and was doing something else…no one would know.

He never raised his hand. But he did look up when the teacher interrupted him from his incessant writing with large, brown, intelligent eyes. And somehow he always knew the answer.

English was his favourite subject. It was the only time that he seemed to actually participate. His backpack was made heavier every day not only by his class books, but the ones that he brought for his own time. Two or three at least. He loved to read, it was one of his great passions.

While the other boys played football and baseball, he sat at a table in the library and wrote. Sometimes he read too. And sometimes he simply looked out the window. His mind was never at rest. It was almost as if one could see the gears turning inside his head; ideas forming as he watched the people outside coming and going. The rain. The turning of the leaves. The snow. The cars driving by. Then he would write again.

He once humbly admitted he wanted to become a writer. But he would say no further on the subject, unlike the other students who elaborated greatly on their desired professions.

Then it was no surprise at his anxiousness to take a course on creative writing during his last year of high school. The teacher was well-known through the school, and already had a few small published works of his own. Everyone, including the teacher, was anxious to see what he turned in. But all year he turned in nothing. It was obvious that he wrote however. The class was slightly disappointed when they were denied each week to see what the genius had written.

Three weeks before the end of the school-year, he stepped forward and presented his masterpiece. Twenty-five pages long. It had never been reworked – that was not the way that he wrote. But it had been carefully written all through the year.

At the end of the week, the teacher waited until the class was gone. The boy sat in the back; his pen still in his hand and his notebook closed. The teacher picked up the graded story off of his desk and walked over to him. He placed it in front of the boy and smiled as he put his hand on his shoulder. "Don't quit your day job just yet, Bobby," he said with a gentle smile.

He looked up at the teacher as he walked back to his desk. Slowly, Robert Goren stood up, taking his notebook, masterpiece and backpack, and left the room. He stood outside as he paged through the twenty-five sheets of massacred words. Close to the end, an entire page had been crossed off. Bobby swallowed hard, almost having to fight back tears. His favourite section had the simple words written above it in the same blood red ink that covered the rest of his work, "don't need this part."

Closing his eyes, he felt his soul crunch like a fallen leaf. It was bad enough that the leaf fell from the tree, but then for someone to come along and step on it was the final blow.

* * *

Detective Goren sat at his desk, looking at the words on the single page in front of him. Paperwork done, he was bored in the last few hours spent at the office. It had been years since he had tried to write anything other than reports. Granted, mostly, he just didn't have any time.

It was a simple poem, beginning with the lines of a song he had heard from someone's overly loud radio the night before. It didn't rhyme – it didn't have to. Each stanza he felt it getting pushed deeper into an abyss…just like his greatest fear.

Genius

_- Robert Goren_

"Show me the road  
And I will find my own"  
Confinements do not concern me  
Restraints will only break  
A genius' work doesn't make sense  
Maybe to you

I can see the whole picture  
Just open your eyes  
Look into mine  
Fall off the road  
It's only worse if you hold me back  
But you can never let me go  
Are you afraid I'll fall away?  
Maybe I will

Too far, too deep  
Coming back isn't an option  
Sideways is up, up is down  
The last piece of the puzzle,  
Doesn't fit anymore  
Do you think I'm crazy now?  
But all genius' are crazy  
Maybe I am

For a few moments, he almost liked it. Bobby Goren, the modern Sherlock Holmes of the Major Case Squad, writing poetry at his desk. It had just come to him, just like that. He wondered what that teacher would think of him now. And what he would think of the poem. The pen fell from his hand.

"Bobby?" Eames asked, looking up from her desk. She glanced down at the paper. "Hey, what's that?"

It was a genuinely curious question. But Bobby only smiled slightly and took the paper, wadding it up and lightly tossing it in the trashcan next to his desk. "Nothing," he replied.

Eames shrugged and simply went back to work.


End file.
